


Longing to Belong

by ohstardustgirl



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Evil Empire, F/M, Modern AU, On the Run, Romance, private detective AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-04 00:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12759297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohstardustgirl/pseuds/ohstardustgirl
Summary: Cassian Andor is a Private Investigator, hired by Jyn Erso to find her long lost father. But Cassian’s digging leads him to Palpatine’s evil empire, and suddenly he and Jyn are running for their lives - together.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So far each of these chapters has been the result of a prompt request from someone lovely on tumblr.
> 
> Title is from the song of the same name by Eddie Vedder:  
>  _my heart's an open wound that  
>  only you'd replace  
> and though the moon is rising  
> can't put your picture down  
> love can be frightening when you fall_

It takes her far too long to answer the door to her house and his heart is in his throat, pounding in time with his fist on the wood.

Jyn swings the door open and stands there, wide eyed and dressed for bed.

“Detective Andor? What are you doing here - hey!” She squawks as he pushes past her into the house. Cassian locks the door behind him and peeks out through the curtain. He catches the flash of headlights but whoever it is has parked down the street, which means they’re approaching on foot. This nice quiet suburb is about to get very messy. He left the the force in Mexico to get away from life or death and it’s followed him to this quiet little town.

“Detective - Cassian - what’s going on?” Jyn grips his arm and stands close. It’s only the third time they’ve met and he’s not used to someone always standing so near to him, not used the the somersault his stomach does when he looks at those big green eyes.

“I found him, your father.” Cassian pulls away and takes the measure of the house. _Two exits. Three if you count the upstairs bedroom window that overlooks the porch._ He grabs her arm where she’s stood frozen in shock and pulls her along to the kitchen. “You need to get out of here, now.”

“But - Cassian what are you saying?” Jyn stumbles and almost falls into his arms as he turns, and his hands frame her face as if she were a lover and not a client.

“Your father works for Palpatine,” Her jaw goes tight and her eyes turn to steel, and he sees the beautiful woman carved out of marble he met in his office only a week ago; the sullen daughter hoping to find a long lost parent. “The industrialist, the druglord, the arms dealer - call him what you will. I went to one of his offices asking questions about Galen Erso yesterday and since then three people have tried to kill me. And then someone broke into my office but the only thing missing was your file with your address. I don’t think any of this is coincidence, do you?”

To Jyn’s credit, she doesn’t argue. Her eyes meet his - a virtual stranger barging into her home in the middle of the night, dragging her out into the streets - and something tightens in his gut at the trust it takes for her to nod and follow him.

“Wait!” She calls as she scrambles back to the hallway. She grabs her purse from the bottom of the stairs and from it pulls an impressive handgun. “We might need this.”

It shouldn’t turn him on when she turns the safety off and primes it, but it does.

As they disappear into the shadows outside together, hand in hand, he thinks that if they make it through this he’s definitely going to ask her out.


	2. Chapter 2

It takes some fairly spectacular and illegal manoeuvres on Cassian’s part, but eventually they lose their tail and make it out of town and onto the desert highway. If it weren’t for the shots that had been fired at them as they ran from her house to his car, he wouldn’t blame Jyn for thinking she was being kidnapped.

“Where did you get that gun?” He asks when there’s only the silence of the road and the stars between them. The rear view mirrors shows nothing, no headlights behind them.

“My foster father,” Jyn runs her hand over the outline of the gun in her purse on her lap. She looks tired now, and perhaps a little less confident than earlier. “He was a veteran, and somewhat paranoid. He made sure I knew how to protect myself.”

“And can you?”

Her head drops back against the headrest, and he catches a glint in her eye in the mirror and wishes he could see it under different circumstances. “Let’s hope you never have to find out.”

He does hope, hopes that someday they can drive through the desert with a blanket of stars above them and smiles on their faces. She shivers and crosses her arms over her chest, and it brings him back to the present. She’s still dressed in just cotton pyjamas. Cassian stretches his arm behind him to the back seat, gropes around until he feels something fluffy beneath his hand.

“Here, take this.” He pulls the parka through to the front seat. It’s heavy as he holds it in one hand, the other on the steering wheel. “You’re cold, take it.”

There’s a beat before he feels the weight of the coat transfer to her, and it rustles as she wraps it around her. He steals a glance, feels warmth in his chest at the sight of her bundled up in the puffy blue coat with fur haloed around her head. “Thanks,” her breath puffs out in a small cloud. “And I’m sorry that you’ve been dragged into this. I mean, I thought my father was dead or living with a secret family or something, maybe he was just a dirtbag who never recovered after my mum, I never thought he would be working for the biggest criminal in America.”

“You couldn’t have known, Jyn.” _And I should have turned around and walked away the moment Palpatine’s name came up, but the need in your eyes... how could I let something that burned so bright extinguish?_

“I should have. My family is cursed.” Out of the corner of his eye he sees her hands pluck at a loose thread near the zipper of his coat. “Saw - my foster father - I always thought he knew more than he let on and he told me not to go digging. Guess now I know why.”

“Maybe he just wanted to protect you.”

“Yeah,” she sighs, and chuckles. “I never was great at doing what I was told.”

Cassian smiles, not in the least bit surprised. “There’s a motel about an hour north from here. We can hide out there tonight, and figure out a plan.”

He feels her eyes on him, measuring. “I would say you’re just trying to get into my pants, but hiring someone to shoot at us seems a bit elaborate.”

He chuckles. “I am not trying to get into your pants, I promise.”

She’s quiet for a moment, head tilted back and eyes a heavy weight on him like a caress. “Hmm. There’s still time.”

Cassian’s heart jumps into his throat and he stares at her for too long, as she bites her lip against a smile and looks up at him through her lashes. He clears his throat as he snaps back to the present and refocuses on the road, hears her yawn.

“Get some sleep,” he reaches out and squeezes her hand, driven by some strange force to just touch her. “I’ll wake you when we get there.”

Jyn shuffles in her seat, squeezes his hand and closes her eyes. “I trust you.”

 _Should you?_ he thinks as he looks at her lashes that are long and dark against her pale cheek. _If you knew the things I had done..._ Cassian sighs and rubs his left hand against his forehead to ease the tension building there, loneliness sitting like ice in his chest as Jyn sleeps.

_I wish I could promise that I could keep you safe._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PI Cassian and Jyn arrive at a seedy motel to rest and get out of the rain. Cassian goes to check the perimeter and Jyn decided to take a shower because she is cold and wet. As Jyn comes out of the bathroom wearing only a towel she finds Cassian taking off his wet clothes, to dry off... (@tekayf-blog)

Jyn shivered as the cool air met her damp skin, and her soaked pyjamas landed on the bathroom floor with a wet slap. The shower sputtered and struggled before it finally settled into a steady stream. The rain that had fallen as she and Cassian had approached the motel had been unlike any she had seen in this part of the world - the type of desert rain that the locals would talk about for years to come. Cassian had insisted on ditching the car a few miles down the road rather than parking up at the motel, which she supposed made sense if they were being followed. The clerk behind the counter hadn’t looked up at them from his television which blared something in Spanish, a shotgun resting across his knee. 

This was not a four star hotel.

Jyn set her gun on the counter and pulled back the shower curtain. It was little more than a tray, as there wasn’t space for a tub, and from the decor and grime she assumed this bathroom was older than her. She stepped under the hot spray and let the contrast against her cool skin shock her into focus. 

_My father is alive._

_He works for one of the most powerful and potentially evil corporations in the world._

_His employers want me dead._

_The private investigator I hired to find my father saved me from hitmen and we’re both on the run._

_My father..._

Jyn stuck her face directly in the spray as if to remove the man from her thoughts. Looking for Galen had been a mistake, and now not only was her life at risk, but so was Cassian’s, a man she had known only for a week.

_The Ersos are cursed._

Her heart jumped into her throat as she heard the door to the motel room open and close. She scrambled, tangling with the mouldy shower curtain and nearly losing her footing as her hand landed on the 9mm on the counter.

“Jyn?” Cassian’s voice - so new and yet so welcome - called out. He had been out scouting the perimeter of the motel. “You ok?”

She sighed, and pushed away from the counter and kneeled under the spray with her head in her hands. Exhaustion hit her like a tidal wave as the last spike of adrenaline faded. “Yeah. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Her pyjamas were a lost cause and it would take hours to dry them on the pathetic blow heater in the bedroom. She dried off and wrapped herself in a towel of dubious cleanliness and nearly lost her grip on it when she opened the bathroom door and saw Cassian at the end of the double bed.

Water dripped from his messy hair down his neck, catching in the dark hair that spread across his bare chest before narrowing into a strip that ran all the way down to the line of his underwear, visible where his belt and fly hung open. He was digging in the backpack he had pulled from the trunk of the car when they left it. Jyn’s throat closed over and her brain stuttered as the sensible part of her mind suggested that she might want to look at his face instead of at his body. 

He looked up from his bag to her, and his mouth dropped open briefly and there was heat in his gaze when their eyes met. Jyn bit down the urge to cover every inch of his skin with her mouth and grip hard at his slender hips. _Priorities, Jyn. Safety first, sex later._

Cassian pulled a balled up grey t-shirt from the bag and offered it out to her. “I always keep some spares and emergency stuff in the car.”

Jyn blinked back to the present and reached for the offering. Their hands touched briefly and she blamed hormones and adrenaline for the shiver that sparkled all the way down to her belly. Her cheeks flushed hot as if she were still under the shower. His dark eyes dipped down to the towel and back up again and his face flushed slightly. _Oh,_ she thought, _it isn’t just me._

Cassian shook his head and broke the spell, and picked up the backpack. “I think we’re safe, for now. You should get some sleep.”  
Exhausted, Jyn dozed as the shower ran, and was too tired to take no for an answer when Cassian came out and tried to sleep on the floor instead. _I want you near me,_ she couldn’t quite say out loud.

The springs in the bed creaked as he settled in next to her, on his side, only a foot between them in the small double. Outside the rain continued to hammer against the windows.

“I’m sorry you were dragged into my family’s mess.” Jyn whispered into the darkness. Her heart pounded when his hand reached out and touched hers, and gave a gentle squeeze before his thumb started to run back and forth across her knuckles.

“It’s not your fault, Jyn. I pushed a little harder than I should have once I got a hint of who we were dealing with.” He sighed heavily. “Palpatine’s Empire, it did some awful things to where I grew up in Mexico. The good people keep getting poorer and the bad people get richer. Cartels, slavery, arms dealing - everywhere you look, something leads back to him. Back home, I kept seeing these connections, but no one above me in the force would listen to me.”

“You were a cop?”

“Yeah. I started getting warnings, and so did my family, my colleagues... and I didn’t listen, not in time. My father paid the price.”

Jyn felt her heart break with the weight of guilt. This good man had tried to escape his ghosts, and she had opened the door for them to come back. Sorry seemed too small and insignificant a word. Jyn shifted closer to him, wrapped her arms around his torso and buried her face in his neck. He stiffened and held his breath, before melting into her. His arms around her felt like safety, foreign for someone who had kept others so far away for so long. It didn’t feel like a weakness, either.

Jyn closed her eyes tight and breathed in his clean scent as his nose brushed against the top of her head. She chased away the thoughts of tomorrow and focused on his heartbeat. It would have been so easy to lift her lips to his and kiss him and distract themselves with pleasure, and she considered it as his hands ran up and down her spine. She imagined his touch drifting lower, under and up beneath the t-shirt she wore, and she gripped him a little tighter.

But then Cassian placed the sweetest of kisses on her forehead, and whispered to her to get some sleep, and she realised that she didn’t want them to taint something beautiful with fear.

 _We could have something beautiful_ , she thought as she drifted off with his touch soothing her, _if we live._


End file.
